


And Then, This Happened

by itsaquinnquinnsituation



Category: The X-Files RPF
Genre: F/M, Gen, Gillovny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 19:48:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5797510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsaquinnquinnsituation/pseuds/itsaquinnquinnsituation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My vision of the new developments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Then, This Happened

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction, intended for entertainment purposes only. I do not mean to offend or insult anyone. No characters, real or based off real people, belong to me. I am not making money off my work. 
> 
> This is my universe and exactly how I see it. Writing should be enjoyed, not judged. 
> 
> This is my first time writing in this fandom. I do hope you like it. I wrote this in one breath without beta-ing or otherwise giving it a second thought because then, I might have lost the balls to post it. Probably shows in the abundance of run-ons. 
> 
> Just my vision of the recent developments post-promo/expo. Nothing too concrete on the setting.

*****

 

It all started with a mobile phone.

“Augh, it’s dead!” – He made a grimace, - “My phone” – He waived it, - “I was going to request an Uber back to the hotel…”

David and his Ubers, she thought. Seriously. She asked him once, she remembered, how he got away with using them, being a celebrity and all. He just shrugged his shoulders and chuckled:

“You flatter me, Gillian.”

She didn’t understand that remark and continued to stare at him blankly. His smile faded:

“Nobody recognises me anymore.”

Oh. 

She didn’t expect that. Neither the actual idea nor him *saying* it. Coming from him, such simple admission was a big step. But anyway, back to the present. Back to him now with his grey suit and those ridiculous grey converse shoes that looked both unfitting and maddeningly endearing. 

Her response, oddly, was:

“Well, you can crash at mine.”

She didn’t even understand what she said, it was like the words fell out of her mouth, clinked hitting the ground and rolled to rest at his feet. And he, very appropriately, snapped his eyes to hers with a dumbfounded expression.

She could call him a taxi. She could request him an Uber even, if he was so hellbent stubborn. Anyone else at the expo could give him a ride, heck, several of the guests were probably staying at the same hotel. And in the absolute worst, unimaginable, unfathomable scenario that every single guest’s mobile phone was in disrepair, there was probably a landline in the building. 

But out of all these options, her first reaction was to invite him to hers.

She felt the temperature of her skin beginning to rise. He was still looking at her with that idiotic, stunned expression. And then someone came by, began to chatter, by the tone of it, started to ask both of them questions, what exactly, she did not hear and she didn’t even hear herself as she blurted out something, anything, to get that person off her back and she stumbled off blindly, feeling his blank stare setting fire to her exposed back. 

He did come by to give her a kiss on the check before he actually left, some twenty minutes later. He didn’t mention how he was getting back and she, appropriately, didn’t ask. She felt so out of sorts that she didn’t even try to laugh it off, in fact, she still had a hard time looking at him, but she didn’t have to because she could feel that look. 

 

 

Something changed. Something finally snapped somewhere, something finally gave or maybe some switch was somehow flipped.

And it remained so the next day, the last full day they were to have together. Unlike last time they saw each other, this time it was him who was leaving first. She was scheduled to spend another day and a half here. She had planned to relax, have a lazy morning, do some shopping, maybe catch up with a friend. But now, new shoes were the furthest thing from her mind. 

The day was absolutely excruciating. Overnight, that half of it that she spent twisting and turning in between luxurious high thread count sheets, she was engaged in self-sweet talking. She told herself she was tired, she was overwhelmed, she had too much too drink, or better yet, it was just a joke. She joked with David all the time. She spammed his twitter page with innuendo. Harmless banter, innocent flirtation, after all, they were two adults, middle-aged adults, thank you very much, so who was to say that…

But for God’s sake, this was going so well, they had so much fun, they got along so great, everything was going so smoothly until his damned phone ran out of battery and then, this happened. 

Because something did happen. She just wasn’t sure what. 

 

 

She was staring at a large potted plant when Chris came up behind her and ambushed her with a:

“You look very pale.”

It took all of her acting skills to keep her cool. She turned to him with an apologetic smile:

“Sound-proofing qualities of my room are not exceptional as it turns out. I couldn’t catch a wink.”

Chris raised his brows:

“And you’d think that high up…”

She interrupted him with a conspiratorial face:

“Uh… I meant the neighbours!”

Chris’ mouth turned into an “o” but then she noticed David and physically felt her face fall. He looked at her and she immediately turned back to Chris only he was no longer next to her so all she could do was walk. She did, until she could hide behind a tall column. There, she kept her eyes closed until she could breathe again. 

They hardly said a word to each other all day. A word word, not the bullshit word. That’s to say, they posed for photos, ate food, laughed, chattered with the guests, answered questions and David who did all those things with her was not the same David who looked at her in a blank stupor the night before. But then, David was an actor. She was one too, but somehow, her lips soon tired out from phony smiles and the moment the spotlight was off them, she retired into a quiet shadowy corner. Her plan was to call a taxi and run. Before she had to either once again speak with Chris and observe his sly omniscient smile, or face David – the real David – the David who reacted very naturally – and very appropriately – to her very out-of –place comment some fifteen hours ago. 

“Can we have breakfast tomorrow morning?”

She jumped and shrieked and dropped her mobile. It fell right by his converse-clad feet. He lifted it for her, smiling, examining it as though it was a quirky souvenir. He looked once again at her with a smile:

“…..before I leave?”

“W-what?” – She took the mobile from his hands, opened it and wiped the screen. Her hands were almost visibly shaking.

He laughed:

“I said, can we have breakfast together tomorrow morning before I head over to the airport?”

She finally looked at him too and immediately, his smile vanished. She must have looked absolutely horrendous. The words got stuck in her throat and she struggled for several seconds before she managed to croak out:

“Where?”

He shrugged:

“How’s yours?”

His lips smiled and his eyes looked like they did, but they didn’t. Or maybe they did, but his heart didn’t. Because she couldn’t exactly see it but she felt it. Because this was the same David she accidentally invited in.

He was still looking at her and smiling, by now mischievously, and suddenly she felt fine, as though a wave of warm water washed over her. Even if he could feel what she was agonising over (and he very well could, they were under each other’s skin that deep!) it was somehow alright because he still wanted to spend his last minutes in the city with her. With her, alone. So she also smiled, exhaling:

“Sure.”

“Great. Hope you didn’t break it.”

She looked at him and he pointed with his eyes alone to her mobile. 

She looked at it and then back at him and he had that smile for just one more second, and then he was gone. 

He knew. 

Of course he knew. She knew it too, that wasn’t the problem. The problem, as always, was far more abstract and all-encompassing in nature. It always was. If it wasn’t they wouldn’t have been here now, in this ridiculous situation, playing these ridiculous games. He wasn’t laughing at her, no, because if he was, he might as well laugh at both of them.

The rest of the evening was unremarkable and she went back up to her hotel room feeling ambivalent and exhausted. The sleep still wouldn’t come and of all things, she was worried about waking up with dark circles. Not about having breakfast with David or David catching the plane and leaving her again or the day and a half she was still scheduled to spend without him in this city, but about the dark circles. They were much easier to worry about. 

 

It was his call that actually woke her up in the morning. She scrambled for her mobile:

“Hello?”

“Did I wake you up?” – He laughed on the other end. Then added, - “Scully.”

“No” – She pushed her face into the pillow for a second, then spoke again, - “When do you… when is your plane… what time are we…?”

He laughed again on the other end. She hated him for it. She was in no mood for laughter, or the Mulder-and-Scully references, even though him waking her up like that really did smell of Mulder and Scully, and him ditching her did too, for that matter, except they weren’t in the nineties anymore and underneath it all, there was very little to make light of. 

He probably knew that too, though. He said:

“I can be there in forty-five. Would that be alright?”

*No it wouldn’t. It’ll take me about as much to draw a new face.*

Aloud she said:

“Sure. Call me when you are here.”

He hung up and she rolled out of bed. Fortunately, oversleeping incidentally resulted in her face looking much more refreshed than it otherwise would have been. 

 

The breakfast was being extremely awkward and uneventful. They laughed and chatted, sitting in the livingroom area of her luxurious suite, but the real David and the real Gillian were not talking. The real Gillian was waiting for the real David to shoo his alter-ego away and hopefully get to the matter they were hopefully - actually - collected to discuss here. But faux-cheerful David continued to ask her about her near-future plans, her children’s school, the nightlife in London and was long since done with his food even though she could barely swallow. She almost gave up hope when he finally leaned back and awkwardly cleared his throat. Her heart nearly stopped. 

It was him now. It was now really him. The witty, smart-arsed mask had falled off and he suddenly looked lost and vulnerable. He said:

“The flight to London is, of course, much longer than the one to New York…”

As if he were finishing a sentence. Maybe he was. She didn’t know because she barely listened to his alter ego. She waited. He finished:

“… But I just wanted to know if you thought it was possible.”

It was hell of a hard for him to say it and she knew it because it took him twenty-three years. Half his life, one could say. Half of her life, definitely. Literally, actually. At this particular point, she could say meeting him divided her life cleanly in half. There was life before David and the one after. Never the one with.

She looked at him and the way the morning light was falling on his face made him appear haggard, worn down and old. She could see every wrinkle. Or maybe she couldn’t see really, she just knew where they were. She remembered every single one of them. For all her bad memory, she had a mental catalogue of his wrinkles. She didn’t create it, it evolved on its own. And every time she met him again, the catalogue grew and made her sadder not because they appeared but because she didn’t witness them do that. 

He smiled, sad, serious and hesitant. She mimicked him almost exactly. 

A Mulder and Scully thing. A Mulder and Scully thing, she thought, damned Mulder and Scully got us good. She thought, she herself rarely was this serious, and she rarely saw David this serious, this was more of Mulder and Scully conversation. Unspoken and heavy. Full of all sorts of unexpressed emotions. And they weren’t Mulder and Scully, and damned, if she didn’t actually *dislike* Scully, because Scully was dull and plain and not very complex, but she envied Scully because Scully always had her Mulder the way she never had David because real life was always more complex than a show, even a show involving all sorts of whimsical made-up creatures. And yet, she thought, how unfair it was, unfair and remarkable, that that thing – that connection – that their two characters had – they had it too, it always existed. In the beginning, they denied it, of course, it was much easier to mask it as good acting, but now all she felt was envy and anger because twenty-three years had passed and David was about to leave her to catch his plane. 

Maybe she could live another twenty-three years. She probably would, if she was lucky. In fact, she definitely would want to, but definitely not in the way she spent the previous ones. She didn’t know how, she knew he didn’t know either, but somehow, it wasn’t very important. The hows were just a circumstantial matter. A detail. A tricky thing to sort out, but just a thing nonetheless, a thing so small in comparison to twenty-three years after but without David and the prospect of that, part two, that alone made it entirely insignificant. *You can do anything you put your mind to…* and such. She said it herself, didn’t she? About time she took it to heart.

She said:

“Yeah.”

He kept looking. He just kept looking, waiting for her to go on and she suddenly missed him sorely, all the moments, all the months and days and hours and minutes he wasn’t there or she wasn’t there, or they were there but their attentions were directed at trivial things, at little things, tiny insignificant things that somehow amounted to twenty-three years.

She added:

“Yes, I think it’s possible.”

Suddenly she felt hot tears in her eyes and she turned away, towards the expanse of her hotel suite to blink them back or prevent him from seeing them. 

He didn’t need to see them though. Knowing him, he already knew. He also lived those twenty-three years, after all. 

He leaned forward onto the table towards her and added quietly:

“I’d… really like that…”

She couldn’t reply right away because the tears pooled into her mouth. She swallowed them slowly. Then, she whispered:

“I’d like it too.” 

And then she really thought she might lose it and cry, cry like Scully would have, only she didn’t know if she would cry for the lost years, or for the years to come, or because he still had his plane to catch because there were all these ‘details’ that still stood between them. But now, there was hope. If there was nothing else she could look forward to in her personal life – or nothing else she could even imagine looking forward to, if she were honest – there was hope. And if David was to get off this chair and leave her, he would come back. That wasn’t something she needed to hope for, she knew that. He always came back, all of these times that he left, through all of these years. This was their Mulder and Scully thing. That thing that always lead them to each other. 

But if Scully got her Mulder in the end, she wanted her shot at it too. And that’s why she hoped that when David came back again next time, he wouldn’t leave.

That the next twenty-three years would be different. 

 

 

*****


End file.
